Fancy crash, 3 back flips with 2 1/2 twists. What happened?

Joined
Nov 17, 2014
Messages
329
Reaction score
34
Age
59
Location
Hattiesburg, MS USA
I was trying to get some dusk shots of the sunset today. Got some nice ones too. On my 4th flight, the quad was 120 meters up an about 200 meters away moving directly into a 10-12mph wind. It looked like it suddenly fell several meters, then regained it's composure. My first thought was "WOW! What are the winds DOING up there??" It took me a few seconds to realize that it was not on my original heading. I tried to turn it back to home, but nothing happened. It dropped again. I tried to steer it. It did not respond. The quad lurched again and then finally came down about 100 meters from my launch position. It still read that it had GPS and 10 satellites locked. It had active video still feeding through my FPV.

Watching the video, it looks like something happened to one of the right side motors, but I might be over-interpreting it. With it not being responsive, I wonder if it was some sort of software lockup??

There is not a scratch on it. The gimbal moves fine. I powered it down and then back on again and it acts like it is ready to fly. It picks up 3 satellites IN the house.

I took it apart. My motors spin fine with no resistance. The ESC's are ver 2.1 ....I put them in, so my soldering could be suspect. I've had about 30 flights on these ESC's. There are no burn marks on the plastic or the top of the ESC modules. The wires are not melted and appear to have a solid soldering connection.

So, how many flips do you count??

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyZYxv3PSOo[/youtube]

I would be interested in your your thoughts.
 
Re: Fancy crash, 3 back flips with 2 1/2 twists. What happe

I agree it looks like something from the right side of the video, looks like one of the motors was stopping or slowing and coming back on

Very weird for sure
 
Re: Fancy crash, 3 back flips with 2 1/2 twists. What happe

I jiggled and wiggled all the wires on the ESC's. I decided to let it run a while and try to reproduce the problem

This time when I restarted it, this is what I got.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYvzKOw_Nvc[/youtube]

So I will be replacing a motor this week. May as well do a few other mods....
 
Re: Fancy crash, 3 back flips with 2 1/2 twists. What happe

Glad you figured it out, you got pretty lucky its still in one piece
 

Recent Posts

Members online

Forum statistics

Threads
143,066
Messages
1,467,352
Members
104,933
Latest member
mactechnic